Days Off

Today I’m beginning 21 days off work. A staycation. I will be going to my sister’s house for our annual iris pilgrimage. We exchange iris, label iris and do all things iris. So there goes a couple of days. I desperately need to do some work in the yard. Unfortunately, that has to be my top priority. I’m working on ways to make it take less time but can’t afford to hire it done. We have had record amounts of rain here and the weeds to prove it. I started using Preen last year and plan to continue to do more of it. I can’t really tell if it is helping. I also plan to kill all the grass that grows around the edges of my gardens, so I don’t have to trim around them. I want to mulch heavily the gardens that don’t have iris in them. And, I have to rebuild my raised garden walls because they weren’t built correctly. The walls need to tip in. They gradually get pushed out by the weight of the soil and now they are falling over. Ok, well that was a lot probably nobody but me cares about, but it is to explain what keeps me from writing. I need to get to the point where things are maintained with less work and time.

On days when I can’t work outside, or when I’m tired and need a break, I will be writing. I do have a lot of rooms that need cleaning and a few things to do for work, but I will still be writing. Hoping to do at least some every day. Maybe I should aim for an hour. That seems doable. I have some of the same issues in the house, where I need to get the rooms so everything can maintain itself easier. The cats are no help.

During my work week, this last week, I did work on the outline. I realized my courtroom scenes weren’t coming out as I wanted them too. So I have been studying courtroom dramas and scenes to see what changes I should be making, and I think I have that figured out now. So, I’m going back through the outline to make corrections to build the tension better and streamline the scenes. I hope to fix all of this in the rewrite. The outline will help me to make the rewrite quicker and better. I still have 4 chapters to write of the rough draft. I hope to do some of that today. So…I’d better get writing.